I’m having technical difficulties uploading the screenshots. 😂 I obviously didn’t take lessons in Basic Computer Troubleshooting.

This list is incomplete but it’ll have to do.

Edited to add these extra lessons:

Extra-ordinary You: On Kyung and the Philomel

Extra-ordinary You: Ep 12 The Pottery Class

1. Art class

I first noticed it in Chapter 3 at 7:37. The art teacher showed the class how to draw DanOh’s face.

She said, “Even though it’s the same left (profile of DanOh), depending on your location, DanOh will appear a little differently. Depending on your location, or depending on how the sunlight comes in. Depending on how we see the model, we will draw similar but different aspects of DanOh. Now start!”

Both Haru and Kyung drew her.

This was Kyung’s drawing.

2. Importance of names

Naming Haru was an important step in their DanOh and Haru’s relationship. Their literature teacher was explaining a line from the famous poem, “Flower” by Kim Chun-su.

In Chapter 5, 11:18, the literature teacher talked about the importance of names. I already brought this up, but I’ll mention it again.

He said, “’When I called their name, they came to me and became a flower.’ They became a flower. How did this happen? What did they go through? Name. It’s because they were called a name. According to this, calling out a name means that a wish was embedded into it. Therefore, becoming a flower means that their relationship was fulfilled.”

Here’s the poem. It’s an easy read.

Flower
by Kim Chun-su

Until I spoke his name,
he had been
no more than a mere gesture.

When I spoke his name,
he came to me
and became a flower.

Now speak my name,
one fitting this color and odor of mine,
as I spoke his name,
so that I may go to him
and become his flower.

We all wish
to become something.
You to me and I to you
wish to become an unforgettable vision.

For DanOh and Haru, to call out each other’s name means they’re no longer alone. Haru’s been seeking for her through time while DanOh has been looking for someone to change her fate. Calling out each other’s name is an intimate act, in the sense that they begin to exist in the world for that person. They become real for each other. Haru’s no longer just a nameless face, and DanOh’s no longer just an “extra” serving the main characters.

But for the Squid guy, naming was a terrible thing.

DanOh: Oh, there was one weird thing that happened though. Maybe it’s because I was tired from traveling with Ha Ru.
Squid: Ha Ru?
DanOh: Yes! If I’m with Ha Ru, the continuity really does change, even though you may not believe me.
Squid: You gave him a name, didn’t you? Do you know what it means to call him by his name? You’re a supporting character.
DanOh: I know. So what?
Squid: Supporting characters should exist for the main characters.
DanOh: I did support them a lot before coming back.
Squid: When something that was originally supposed to just exist is given a name, and moves around, everything will go wrong. Leave.

She called him Haru because with him, she thought she could change her fate, step by step, little by little, day by day.

3. Finding your pair

Then, there was the Gauss math. Again, I already touched on this.

“You can find the answer by using a method that Gauss discovered when he was in elementary school. He discovered that when you add all the number between 1 to 100, it’s always 101. Wasn’t Gauss such a genius?”

Essentially, Gauss discovered that you can pair off numbers to come up with a solution.

How does it apply to our story? The way I see it is DanOh’s pair is Haru. Together, they can solve DanOh’s problem.

4. How to make a variation

Next, there was music teacher’s lesson on Beethoven.

The music teacher said, “This piece is Beethoven’s Variations in F Major, opus 34. Let me tell you how variations work. They add their own style to the songs of the past generation and end up creating various musical expressions. They don’t limit themselves to the conventional styles of music. By doing that, they are looking for the joy of music.”

The point of the music teacher is that life should be lived like a variation of a basic pattern. To live fully and joyfully, an individual must create his or her own expression. The conventions shouldn’t limit how one chooses to live. Just like what DanOh and Haru did when they skipped school. They created a story of their own that is separate from the writer’s recycled manhwas. So, although DoHwa said earlier in the episode that the plot was always the same, meaning there’s a female lead, male lead, and a male second lead, the male lead and second lead can interchange.

How does that apply to our story: Haru found his chance (lol. Remember the alternative title to this show?) to switch with Kyung when he volunteered to accompany DanOh to the clinic and they skipped music class instead.

5. Love triangles

In Chapter 19 at 2:00, the teacher lectured on inductive definition in math.

She said, “Inductive definition is not difficult. You just have to view it from a different sequencing perspective. Alright, it’s the relationship they have between surrounding variables. Understanding this particular sequencing is called the inductive definition.
For example, if we’re interested in the kid Yang Yi. But instead of separating just Yang Yi to examine him, we’d take a look at the relationship between him, and Yang Il, and Yang Sam who are next to him. We’re examining their relationships collectively. You three are always together…are you in a love triangle?”

How does this apply to our story? The obvious love triangle here is DanOh-Haru-Kyung. That’s why Kyung took out the singed comic page and studied it.

6. Being “extra-ordinary you”

But then, the important lesson here came from the English tutoring class. I previously told you that the correct spelling of the title is Extra-ordinary. Here’s the link:

I also said that in Episode 6, that Haru decided to be “extra-ordinary” for DanOh. Let me repost that now.

Haru: Instead of being an extra that doesn’t know when, where, and how he’ll disappear, I want to be the only person who can change someone’s fate.

Very important: What he means is that he doesn’t want the writer to determine his ending, his disappearance and his death. He wants to determine his own death and he’ll endure it in order to change DanOh’s fate. He may just be an extra. But he’s the ONLY person who can change her fate.

Title alert!!! That’s why he’s extra-ordinary. He’s only an extra in the manhwa, but he’s extraordinarily special because he’s the ONLY ONE who can do this much for DanOh.

Although we already knew the meaning of “extra-ordinary” in the story, it was still good to get a confirmation.

Chapter 19 at 7:12

DanOh: Give it to me. You see, English is my specialty.
Haru: Specialis—
DanOh: Be quiet. If you want to be good in English, you have to know many many words. Well, what don’t you understand?
Haru: Number 14
DanOh: I studied this before. Wait for me. Here it is. Extra-ordinary. What do you think it means?
Haru: Extras that are like us.
DanOh: This word, ordinary, means something is typical. (Pronounced as bo-tong.)
Haru: Typical? You mean like Kim Bo Tongie?
DanOh: Oho. Hey. Focus. Focus. Focus. If you put typical extras like us, and put it together, it makes extra-ordinary. It means remarkable and amazing.

Haru: This word is like us. Two ordinary extras like us met and we are making a special time out of it. Therefore, I’m not just a mere extra to you. Extra-ordinary you.

DanOh: Wow. You! You’re really good at applying words. Wow! Then, out of 10 points, I’ll give you 100 points. No no. 1000 points. Alright. Try writing it down now. Don’t just look at me. You need to write it out. I really wish our special time together will last for a long, long time.
Haru: Ordi-
DanOh: Ah! You got it wrong. It’s ordinary. You need an O. Where’s the O?

7. Self-study: discovering love

The love poem she read from the library:

“He stood out to me in the midst of many people
For some reason, my heart started to ache a little,
when he approached me from afar.
When the small little things he did,
started to have a bid and small meaning to me,
I finally realized
that I was in love with him.”

She was shy at first. And I like that while she was being shy, Haru had been confident.

*Will write separately on this.

But if there’s any doubt that she loved Haru, and not Kyung, it was in toward the end of Chapter 20, when she was “imprisoned” in the hospital. She woke up on Oct 10, Oct 13, Oct 17, Oct 20, Oct 24, and Oct 31. Kyung kept missing her and arriving a day after she regained consciousness: Oct 11, Oct 14, and Oct 18. Finally, on Oct 31, he came when she was conscious, and she took off as soon as their stage was done.

She didn’t miss him. When Kyung asked where she was going in her condition, she said to Haru.

On the way to school, she thought only of Haru, “if my destiny is bound to go however the writer wants it to go, if my destiny is bound to go however the writer wants it to go, I want to be with you for the remainder of my time.”

Then, once they met again, she kissed him first.

*Will write separately on this.

8. More math: Sigma is the sum of who he is

At 11:09, the teacher droned, “Sigma means to sum up. Let’s look at an example. Sigma K is the sum, as k goes from a to b, of f(k). You need to add till the end.”

He watched her doze off and he smiled. lol.

What I like about all these lessons is that Kyung kept belittling Haru that he didn’t matter because he was just an “extra.” But as it turned out, Haru beat him in the test and earned a first-place ranking. According to the class president, the first-place student would help DanOh catch up.

Kyung: I’ll do it.
Class President: The teacher wanted the first place student to.
Haru: That’s me. I’ll do it.
Kyung: Why would you?
Haru: Then you should have won against an extra.
Kyung: What?
Haru: I guess you didn’t expect this.

He won in the end. Although he’s only an extra, what made him greater than Kyung was the sum (or Sigma, lol) of all the things he did for DanOh.

9. Literature class: the innocent/not-so-innocent Haru

Chapter 22 at 4:33

The teacher said, “Let’s take a look at The Stars a short story by Alphonse Daudet. It expresses the romantic love of a shepherd boy who fell in love with a lady by using stars. Alright, everybody. Think of someone you like as I read the last paragraph. (DanOh looked at Haru.) ‘I began to think about the one prettiest and brightest star upon all of them that lost its way and came to sit on my shoulder to sleep.’”

In his dream, he saw a vision of sageuk DanOh in a field of flowers with Prince Kyung and him in the background. Kyung wasn’t interesting in talking to her. She babbled, “My wish is to see the stars in a vast field like this (then voice faltering when she saw that Kyung wasn’t interested) with you, whom I like.”

DanOh woke him up from his daydream, calling his name. He stared intensely at her. She said, “Why do you keep looking at me like that? My face is going to turn red.”

He said, “DanOh, you must’ve liked stars back then, too.” He patted her head and said, “Let’s go.” He was already thinking of fulfilling her wish. Again.

BTW, this is the passage from the short story.

… But the loveliest of all the stars, mistress, is our own, the Shepherd’s Star,
which gives us light as we lead forth our flocks in the dawn, and in the evening also when we bring them to the fold Again. We call her Maguelonne too, lovely
Maguelonne, who runs after Pierre of Provence, and is his bride every seven years.”

“What, shepherd? Are there, then, marriages among the stars?”
“Why, of course, mistress… ”

And while I was trying to explain to her what these marriages were, I felt something light and delicate drop softly on my shoulder. It was her head, drooping with slumber, that rested against me, with a delicious rustling of ribbons, of lace, and of waving curls. She remained thus, nor stirred till the stars paled in heaven, their light made faint by the climbing day. As for me, I sat and watched her sleep; a little troubled, deep down in my soul, but kept holy by the clear night which has never given me other than beautiful thoughts. Around us the stars continued their silent march, obedient as a mighty army; and once or twice I fancied that one of these stars, the most delicate, the most lustrous, had missed her way and had come to lean upon my shoulder, and to sleep.
source: http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/mystic-verse-and-insights/tale-of-a-starry-night-by-alphonse-daudet.pdf

And here’s the last sentence in French.

Autour de nous, les étoiles continuaient leur marche silencieuse, dociles comme un grand troupeau ; et par moments je me figurais qu’une de ces étoiles, la plus fine, la plus brillante, ayant perdu sa route, était venue se poser sur mon épaule pour dormir…

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_de_mon_moulin/Les_%C3%A9toiles

Relevance to our romcom? The short story is about pure love of a shepherd for his master’s daughter. Remember, when the short story was written in the 19th century, it would have been scandalous for an unwed couple to spend the night together unchaperoned.

However, the shepherd insisted that no “impure thoughts” entered his mind. “God is my witness that, for all the love that scorched my blood, no evil thought occurred to me — nothing but a great pride that, in a corner of the fold, close to the curious sheep, who gazed at her closed eyes — a lamb whiter and purer than them all — slept my master’s daughter under my protection. Never had the heaven seemed so deep to me, the stars so lustrous.”

Meanwhile, earlier in this Chapter 22 at 1:00, DanOh was in bed, kicking the sheets, just remembering Haru’s cheesy, “I want to be alone with DanOh.”

I thought her lips were funny here. They looked like she wanted to kiss Haru in her imagination.

Haru wasn’t feeling like a lowly shepherd boy. He teased DanOh if he should study the book offered by DoHwa on how to woo a woman. And while DanOh was shy to reveal that they were dating, he definitely has no qualms revealing that they were dating to Dohwa and Soochul.

10. Korean literature class: leaving the past behind

The teacher introduced Joengsseokka. “Old traditional poem that talks about one’s feeling and how desperate they were for love. That’s title is Jeongseokka. I’m sure there are some of you who break up when things don’t work out, right? Right. But in this poem, before there is an impossible situation….

DanOh looked at Kyung’s desk because he was absent that day. She knew it was the death anniversary of his mother. Meanwhile, Haru looked at her then looked at Kyung’s desk, too.

I’m sure the Kyung fangirls will interpret this as proof that she’s really in love with Kyung, not Haru. But it can also be interpreted as DanOh’s awareness that Kyung’s her sadness that day. He was very attached to his mother. He’s still traumatized by her death. That’s why he couldn’t go to the hospital with her last night. She’d broken up their engagement; things didn’t work out between them. But they did share a lot of childhood memories.

It didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to get back together again.

11. Pottery class: Be careful with her heart

From Ep 12

The art teacher: The biggest charm in ceramics is the warmth of the creator goes right into the piece.

True. To DanOh, Haru was like the warm sunshine in her dreary days. Once, she grumbled that Jooda has the spotlight because she was the main. But Haru made her the main character, and thus shone the light on her. As I’ve told a poster here before (🤪 who was that?), she was needlessly searching for the spotlight because she was unaware that the sunlight had always been on her and Haru. The sunlight was significant.

Student: If your hand’s warmth is there, isn’t your heart there, too?

Then, DanOh has a flashback of the time she and Haru were playing with the starlight on their palms. Yes. Obvious connection to warm hands, warm hearts.

The art teacher: More than anything, you need to have good understanding of what you’re making. Even if it keeps spinning in the same direction all the time, everything you do will never end up looking the same way. (talks to the clay) What did you say? It said, “I don’t want to be any taller.”
Student: Teacher, how would we know what the pottery is saying?
The art teacher: It’s based on your instinct. Look at this, if you want to make it look tall, and do whatever you please…(breaks it) Whoa! You’ll ruin the pottery and the creator’s heart will be hurt, too.

Was this a warning to Haru to be careful with DanOh’s heart? He could make her heart and heart monitor go wild simply by calling her name and smiling at her. In pottery class, her heart monitor went off when he put his arms around her.

12. English Class

The English teacher was talking about grammar, “The past perfect is when you talked about something that had happened much before. In another words, it’s about something that happened and ended in the past. Should we listen to an example? ‘When I arrived there, the tragic stage had already finished.’ (looking at KY’s table) When I arrived, the tragic stage had already finished.”

This one. At the end of Episode 12, Haru and DanOh were at the rooftop. Haru was feeling uneasy. He suspected that the past was repeating itself and encroaching on their present happiness. DanOh reassured him that it was all in the past. She said, “Haru, it doesn’t matter what the outcome was like. That story already ended. What does an already-ended story matter to us? We’re here trying to change the fate that the writer has determined for us. I’m certain. From the moment I met you, you’re the one to change my destiny.”

Then she collapsed on him. She had a preview of her storyboard in surgery with Kyung in attendance. A teardrop rolled down her eye (not possible, of course, but whatever).

Grrrr, show.